Michael McConville told the BBC that he knows who killed his mother, but won’t tell the police as he would then be treated as an informant by the IRA and his family targeted.

His comments were made the day after Adams, linked to the murder in the Boston College tapes, was arrested by arrangement with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Mother of 10 Jean McConville was murdered by the IRA in 1972. Adams has always denied any involvement in the murder.

The Irish Independent reports that McConville’s son Michael told the BBC, “If I told the police now, one of my family members or one of my children would get shot by these people.

“Everybody thinks that this has all gone away, but it hasn’t. There are splinter groups of the IRA and they would class you as an informant and they would shoot you.

“I have a young family – if my mother was alive today she wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.”

The 42-year-old told the BBC that a PSNI spokesperson rang Michael on Wednesday to tell him that a 65-year-old man had been arrested in west Belfast in connection with the disappearance and murder of his mother.

He added, “I’m glad to see that the PSNI is taking this case very seriously when they’re lifting someone like Gerry Adams.”

McConville also recalled events on the night his mother was kidnapped by the IRA when he was just 11.

He revealed, “A rap came at the door; the IRA gang of about 10-12 barged their way in, and they pulled our mother out of our arms. All my brothers and sisters were holding on to my mother. We were crying and squealing.

“Some of them didn’t wear masks, they were neighbors, I recognized some of them.”

The night before the kidnapping a gang had taken Jean McConville away from her home, beaten her up and left her wandering around the streets disorientated, with her family not knowing where she was.

Michael continued, “She still had the cuts and bruises on her face from when they took her the night before. I knew my mother was dead when an IRA member left my mother’s purse and rings at the house.”

Michael said he was then taken by a gang a week after his mother’s abduction and warned not to ‘say anything about the IRA’.

He said, “They put a hood over my head, brought me to a house and tied me to a chair. They were beating me with sticks around my legs and my arms. They said they were going to put a gun to my head and shoot me. They then fired a cap gun and stuck a penknife in my leg.”

Michael also told Irish state broadcaster RTE that he recognized about two of his abductors.

He said, “The lads were only about 15 and 16 years of age. Afterwards we were taken into care and “never spoke about anything because we were scared.

“But I have seen my mother’s killers in public and hate not being able to bring these people to justice.

“When I see them my blood boils in my body. I can’t stand these people for what they have done to us.”

McConville also told RTE that Gerry Adams had previously apologized to him about the death of his mother and how the family was treated afterwards.

Michael McConville says he knows the identities of the IRA men who killed his mother.